President Joko Widodo pushes for release of Indonesian prisoners overseas but no clemency granted to foreigners

President Joko Widodo has ordered no effort be spared to secure the release of more than 200 Indonesians on death row round the world, but will not be moved on the executions of Andrew Chan and Muryan Sukumaran.

UpdatedFebruary 16, 2015 — 1.22pmfirst published at 11.01am

As Indonesian officials last week sped up their preparations to execute the two Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi emerged from a cabinet meeting to brief reporters.

President Joko Widodo had ordered that no effort be spared to secure the release of more than 200 Indonesians on death row around the world.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo's double standard on the death penalty is reprehensible, and utterly illogical.Credit:Michael Bachelard

"The President has instructed that the state be involved in every legal case," Ms Retno said.

A day later, Mr Joko then told a group of Islamic leaders that there could be no mercy for Chan, Sukumaran and more than 50 other drug offenders who face imminent execution in Indonesia.

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The acts of the rehabilitated Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran could make a powerful difference if they were allowed to continue.Credit:Reuters

Mr Joko's double standard on the death penalty is reprehensible, and utterly illogical.

It damages Indonesia's reputation in Australia and throughout the world. It also imperils the lives of those Indonesians – many of them drug traffickers like Chan and Sukumaran – who languish on death row in prisons abroad.

Mr Joko's predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, secured clemency for more than 150 Indonesian citizens under the death penalty. An integral part of that successful campaign was Mr Yudhoyono's decision to halt all executions in Indonesia for five years.

As his deputy minister for law and human rights, Denny Indrayana, explained: "Logically, if our president is to push strongly to seek clemency for Indonesian citizens facing the threat of the death penalty, then it is logical for our president to also grant clemency to foreigners."

In his speech last week in Yogyakarta, Mr Joko justified his stance on the death penalty by saying, "We carry out death sentences because it is still the law. Secondly, as I have said earlier, 18,000 people die due to drugs every year. This cannot be continued. It can't be."

But Indonesian law does not mandate the death penalty for all drug offenders. Many drug dealers in Indonesia who committed much more serious crimes than Chan and Sukumaran have been handed sentences of 12 years or less.

And, unlike the two Sydneysiders, these individuals were producing and distributing drugs in Indonesia.

Chan and Sukumaran were low- to mid-level organisers in a syndicate that attempted to smuggle more than 8 kilos of heroin from Bali to Australia. They were arrested in 2005 only because the Australian Federal Police tipped off the Indonesian authorities.

These are among the special circumstances that should have been considered by Indonesia's president when he considered their clemency applications, a process that is reinforced by two statutes and the country's constitution.

Indonesian law requires a clemency decision to be made "after thoroughly considering the clemency application".

But Mr Joko did not even appraise the specific merits of the pair's case, issuing a blanket statement that all drug offenders on death row will be killed soon after his election.

If he had, the Indonesian president may have pondered the remarkable rehabilitation of Chan and Sukumaran inside Bali's Kerobokan prison.

With the encouragement of enlightened governors of the penitentiary, the two men have helped transform the prison into a model for the rest of the country.

Chan, now a devout Christian, leads religious services, counsels drug addicts and raises money for medical procedures for Indonesian inmates and their families.

In a prison workshop that once doubled as a crystal meth lab and hid an ecstasy pill pressing machine, Sukumaran now leads art, language, computer and other vocational classes.

These two men convicted for trying to smuggle drugs that would have caused untold misery and death in Australia are now turning around the lives of drug-addicted and wayward Indonesians.

If Indonesia is, as Mr Joko suggests, in the grip of a "drugs emergency", then the acts of the rehabilitated Chan and Sukumaran could make a powerful difference if they were allowed to continue, and were adopted throughout Indonesia.

Moreover, there is scant evidence that killing them will be any kind of deterrent. Research by Jeffrey Fagan, from Columbia Law School, into drugs and the death penalty in south-east Asia found no correlation whatsoever between the rate of execution and the availability, price and use of illicit substances.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is right in saying that the Indonesian government should refrain from a "dreadful, final, irrevocable" act while the pair still have avenues of appeal available to them."We are constantly trying to appeal to Indonesia's sense of itself as a stable democracy under the rule of law and that's what our latest representations are all about."

Indonesia should recognise its reputation for justice and fairness means so much in relations with all friendly neighbours.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says "it is Indonesia that will lose the most from executing these two young men".

The men's friends and families might take issue with Ms Bishop's assessment. But she makes a very salient point.

Two men who have apologised and atoned from their crimes, pioneers of rehabilitation in Indonesia's prison system, will be killed senselessly. Indonesia's standing in the world will be damaged. Many Australians will forgo holidays to Indonesia. Others will reconsider investing in its economy.

And, perhaps most pertinently for the nationalist Mr Joko, he will jeopardise the lives of hundreds of Indonesians abroad.